"Partridge's impressive poems pursue a careful thinker's yearning for abandon, a loyal friend and partner's wish for change. Attentive to fact, to what she sees and knows, Partridge nonetheless makes space for what is wild, outside and within us — for the fears and the blanks of chemotherapy, for sharp variations within (and without) frames and metre of rhyme, and for the welcome consistencies of married love. She has learned detail-work, and patience, from Elizabeth Bishop, but she has made other virtues her own: riffs on familiar phrases open startling vistas and even her love poems get attractively practical. Hers is a welcome invitation: let's listen in." — Stephen Burt

“Partridge is a technical wizard for whom thinking and feeling are not separate activities. She is a hawk-like observer of the particular . . . many times ascending to pitch-perfect verse.” — Ken Babstock, Globe and Mail

"Elise Partridge is a poet of brilliant precisions. Each line presents a new, glinting angle of thought. [Her] poems — good, tangy and chunky on the tongue — somehow reflect life's plenitude while maintaining their own spareness and balance. The result is an art of eerie compassion...." — Rosanna Warren

“A fully formed voice speaks in these poems that invite us to share their closely observed particulars — a hospitable voice, full of intelligence, good humour, candour, engagement. Each poem commands attention. Exemplary.” — Robyn Sarah, National Post

“Unfeigned passion . . . thrilling, memorable.” — Robert Pinsky

"Elise Partridge, whose Chameleon Hours records the author's near brush with death, [offers] both a benevolent and a meaningful response to the threat of extinction. Mostly, Partridge records her horror obliquely and with considerable humour." — Patrick Warner

"Partridge's adjectives bristle with life from page one ... [she] has a knack for creating resonating, symbolic, and yet gently strange images." — Jana Prikryl, Books in Canada

"Elise Partridge's Chameleon Hours deserves the praise it has received on both sides of the border. It is compelling, richly observed, meaningful and exquisitely crafted. Partridge manages to make passionate art from the threat and trauma of grave illness and the possibility of losing one's life." — Barbara Myers, Arc

"She is a force that Canadians cannot afford to ignore any longer. . . . There can never be any question . . . of Partridge's labour, her determination of will, the fastening of the will to the poet's task. And together with an incredible distinction of craftsmanship, of mastery and evotion to the form, Patridge's poetry also features the succsful integration of demotic language, such taht these poems can be enjoyed both for their use of form and for their enjoyment as ordinariy life-affirming poems." — Jason Ranon Uri Rotstein, Canadian Literature.

“There is no cynicism or pretension here, only the authenticity that comes from careful study of both word and world.” — Stephanie Bolster

“Reading [Partridge's work], I find myself marveling at the luck of each person, place, thing, or circumstance, to have Elise Partridge’s exquisite and precise attention. And how lucky we are to get to listen in as she offers each of them her flawless ear." — Jacqueline Osherow